This study represents an effort to examine current ELF researches to find and suggest ideas which emphasise the lingua franca elements of language teaching in Hungarian secondary schools. The paper also aimed to investigate in what extent English teachers in Hungary realized and adapted to the changing role of English in their everyday teaching practice. Another objective was to check how much popular course books help both teachers and students to put themselves into an international atmosphere. The paper claims consistently the need for a change in the attitude from being tied to native norms in teaching English and using the native speaker as an ideal to emphasizing the role of English in international interactions. It argues for the importance of school partnerships and real life interactions with members of other nations in order to gain more practice, confidence, motivation and –above all- a clear picture of what international communication means. In an age when basically there are no borders anymore, it is completely unacceptable to learn a language for years only in a rigid classroom environment. However, the results of the research showed that it is not very common to have this kind of partnerships in Hungarian secondary schools. All in all the results of different examinations showed that although there is some kind of shift from insisting on native norms to a more tolerant approach, and teachers are aware of the changing role of English, teaching and popular course books are still mainly native speaker bound and British culture centred, as well as language exam- centred.